Thanksgiving: For some, that time of the year to reconnect with friends and family, to eat plenty of turkey and trimmings, and figure out what to gift Aunt Ida with this Christmas. For filmgoers, a big fat plate of depression, as the movies grim up, some chasing Oscars and prestige, others going for our wallets, and all of them leaving us in serious need of candy canes and eggnog.
This season’s champ is clearly the feel-good urban horror movie Precious. It leaves no stone unturned to flatten us. A partial checklist of miseries: Poverty. Illiteracy. Morbid obesity. Incest and rape with dad. Two-time teenage pregnancy, the first resulting in a Down’s syndrome child matter-of-factly named “Mongo.” Oh, and it’s 1987, as AIDS did its worst to decimate whole communities. The movie is based, as the subtitle tells us, on the novel Push by Sapphire, and it pushes hard, squashing our tearducts. I smell a musical.
But wait, it gets worse. Poor Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), the punching bag of the title, is stuck in a festering, shades-drawn-tight Harlem apartment with her monster mother, played, in a performance of epic degeneracy, by Mo’Nique. Director Lee Daniels has conceived the film as a kind of fairy tale, with the big-boned actress as an unstoppable seven-headed dragon. From her sweaty couch she smokes incessantly, drinks buckets of Sunkist orange soda, defrauds the welfare authorities, and treats her daughter as her personal slave, hurling everything including the TV at her and poor Mongo—and she uses Precious for sexual gratification, too. Come awards time Mo’Nique should be whisked from the red carpet and transferred to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity. (more…)
Jon Ronson’s The Men Who Stare at Goats had the makings of a good movie. The journalist got hold of an interesting strange-but-true subject: the story of the First Earth Battalion, an Army/CIA initiative that, from the ’60s to the ’80s, explored “psychic warfare.” That is, training soldiers to read minds, walk through walls, and stare at hamsters and goats so long and hard they keeled over dead. I can see a documentary in the coming together of the New Age and the New World Order, or, fictionalized, a sci-fi epic. What we have, instead, is a just-for-the-hell-of-it military satire, so shapeless it just sort of flops around for an hour-and-a-half, oblivious to attention spans and entertainment value.
This is the feature directing debut of Grant Heslov, who, with George Clooney, co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay of Good Night, and Good Luck. Clooney co-stars as Lyn Cassady, whose eyebrow-raising tales of being the army’s prized goat whisperer attract flailing reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor). Wilton, whose life and career are in tatters after his wife dumped him for an editor, wants to be embedded in Iraq, but instead winds up entwined with Cassady, who claims to be a member of the “New Earth Army” that is training “warrior monks” to literally brainstorm America’s enemies. But the program’s founder, uber-hippie Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) has gone missing, and the whole agenda is floundering due to petty grievances between the New Earth Army and a rival camp run by rebel psychic Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who is training his own elite squad. Hooper is wildly envious of Cassady, who is bent on finding his mentor, as Wilton ultimately finds himself. (more…)
One of my favorite moviegoing experiences occurred when I lived in San Jose, CA, and decided one weeknight to see Lars von Trier’s Zentropa (1991). The Danish filmmaker and provocateur was pretty much unknown to me, but I was absorbed by the clever gamesmanship and look-at-me stylization of the production. Not everyone was. “This is the worst film I’ve ever seen!” cat-called one viewer, to general laughter. “No it isn’t, it’s brilliant!” countered another, to which I added my two cents. This went back and forth for several amusing, agreeable minutes, and afterwards everyone met in the lobby to talk it over.
Since then I’ve pretty much been on the other side of the fence, finding von Trier trying. I did enjoy the supernatural satire of his two-season Kingdom TV show, which Stephen King did not improve upon for US viewers. But the Oscar-nominated Breaking the Waves (1996) made me seasick, and don’t get me started on his alleged musical Dancer in the Dark, with the ever-glamorous Catherine Deneuve in a kerchief as an oppressed factory worker, and Bjork so terrorized on-set she ate a sweater between takes (Cannes ate it up, and von Trier and Bjotk split an Oscar nom for best song, the aptly titled “I’ve Seen it All”). The Brechtian Dogville (2003) was another exception, marred by closing credits that suddenly underlined everything that had been fascinatingly submerged in its seamy portrait of an America he has never visited (intensely phobic, he doesn’t get out much)—the awful sequel, Manderlay (2005), was essentially that condemnatory coda extended by 135 minutes. So I didn’t know what to think when, after an intense period of depression, von Trier announced his return with a horror movie, Antichrist, which expands its run this Halloween weekend (and is also available on IFC on Demand). (more…)
Spike Jonze has given us more pleasure than most other filmmakers, just in smaller doses. Like this:
And this:
And of course this:
A Spike Jonze short film of Maurice Sendak’s pint-sized classic Where the Wild Things Are might have been solid gold. (An animated short was produced in 1973.) But Jonze has attempted a full-length, live-action version, which makes no sense. Then again, on paper, Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002) didn’t make a lot of sense, either, but he and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman conjured movie magic from them. There was hope. (more…)
The 47th annual edition of the New York Film Festival kicks off tonight at Lincoln Center. Except for last year’s paternity leave I’ve attended every one since 1994. Back before I acquired grown-up responsibilities I’d see (and pay for) upwards of half of the annual selections, spending weeknights and entire weekends at Alice Tully Hall during its two-week run. I remember getting up early one Saturday to see a splendid four-hour Japanese drama (Eureka—which was sepia-toned, no less), then sitting happily through three more movies—and doing pretty much the same thing the next day. I may have even fit a commercial release or two at the nearby multiplex during breaks.
The good times. Ed Wood at midnight. Vertigo, Playtime, and the 2007 restoration of Blade Runner in 70mm. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and numerous other movies with the creative personnel in attendance, seated feet away from me in the cheap seats (the ones closest to the stage and podium). Discovering prominent international filmmakers like the Dardenne brothers—The Son was the film of theirs that really knocked me out. Hooting at Gaspar Noe’s putrid I Stand Alone—he did stand alone, before the most hostile audience I’ve seen.
If there were an easier way to access the year-by-year festival lineups online, I’d stroll down memory lane for an entire column. (One more: My sympathy for the unemployed protagonist of the film Time Out, when I was in the same unhappy boat.) That’s one bone I’d pick with the festival, whose archiving could use work. Then again, there are memories I’d rather block out. Like the snide questioner who asked Boogie Nights writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson how much the film cost, to which he shot back a temperature-lowering “Was it worth it?” when Anderson replied $15 million. The audience questions in general tend to be migraine-inducing, particularly when asked in three parts—but I have to say that the Q&As after festival press screenings, with professional journalists raising their hands, aren’t always that much more enlightening. Then of course there are the many tepid-boring-bad movies I’ve paid an escalating price for, from $8 fifteen years ago to $20 today; I’d regret them more if I could summon them from the web and actually recall them. (more…)
Add to your list of national crises the death of the American movie star. The obituary was written as soon as the summer grosses were in. Digital effects, franchising, and cartoons are the engines of boxoffice success this year, a familiar story. You have to go down to the current No. 10 slot to find a truly star-driven movie in a CGI-free context, and that is The Proposal, with a long-in-the-tooth Sandra Bullock wringing a few last dollars from romantic comedy.
Sandra, I loved you once, peaking somewhere around 1995, but girlfriend, you’re not growing. And I know you know it. And you know your audience knows it, too. You fooled them once this summer. But having to discover All About Steve, at your age, is as much a chore for them as it is for you. (“This finding-out-about-love shit again,” I imagine you muttering as you report for duty.)
How you, and all the other gals—and all the other guys, for that matter—must envy Meryl Streep. At age 60, with an astonishingly flab-free 32-year career in film, TV and theater behind her, and Katharine Hepburn-type longevity clearly ahead of her, Streep is at the top of her game, as an actor and as a genuine movie star, that rare performer who can get butts into seats without gimmicks. How does she do it? It’s simple—she plays real people uncannily well, and we respond to that knowingness.
I caught up with Julie and Julia, her latest hit, the other night. Writer-director Nora Ephron was correct to split the movie’s structure between her Julia Child and the blogger (rising sort-of star Amy Adams, her co-star in Doubt) who’s emulating her. Child was pretty much a happy, unconflicted personality, and happy, unconflicted personalities don’t make for good biopics. The critics were wrong—while I wish the movie weren’t as shapeless as it is in places, and that Adams’ scenes didn’t smack of manufactured crisis, I didn’t want more of Child. I got what I wanted, and that was Streep busting through Dan Aykroyd’s infamous parody (which Child loved, and which is shown in its entirety in the film) and the subject’s peculiar mannerisms to get at the marrow of the matter. The way Child responds to later-in-life husband Stanley Tucci’s declaration of love on Valentine’s Day, the way she masks her pain when sister Jane Lynch writes that she’s having a baby, the unstated heartache of her life (“I’m so…happy,” she exhales), her quiet whoops at finally having her cookbook published…that’s what I wanted to see, and I saw it so clearly through her acting. Wisely, Ephron doesn’t make a big deal of Child’s prowess in the kitchen and indulge in food porn—the point is that if you apply yourself, like Julia and Julie, you, too, can master the art of French cooking. It’s not Iron Chef. It’s a discipline, and Ephron knows we’ve come to see her star practice her craft. (more…)
As you might have heard, the Beatles albums have been remastered, in a format called “CD.” (“Compact disc,” right? I owned some of those back when I had hair.) Not that you would know from this site—Popdose has done a lousy job covering this.
Actually, as you well know, Popdose has been on the leading edge of the new Beatlemania. I’m just bitter: When I misidentified Mae West’s version of “Twist and Shout” as a “Beatles cover” I was thrown under the bus as our magical mystery tour meandered through all the hoopla. But no Blue Meanie can stop me here.
This week we look at Beatles movies. No, not A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, or Yellow Submarine, which by Popdose law you have to watch at least once per year. Nor Let It Be, which I haven’t seen in its entirety. Has anyone since before those DCs, I mean CDs, were introduced? The boys won Oscars for their song score, beating out the fearsome competition of The Baby Maker, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Darling Lili, and Scrooge. Did recipient Quincy Jones hand-deliver the statuettes, or simply put them in the mail to the fractured four? Whatever—speaking words of wisdom, this is the time to free Let It Be.
I really wanted to include a clip from the 1976 curiosity All This and World War II, which sets Fox-owned footage of the conflict to Beatles covers in a desperate bid to win over the kids and the “nostalgia” audience that was hungry for the next That’s Entertainment! Only in the 70s, folks. But the movie is presumably such a seething mess of rights issues that not even the copyright banditos want to touch it. With a little help from my friends at YouTube, then, my focus is the non-Beatles movies JPGR worked on. (more…)
It’s Labor Day Weekend, and if you’re like me, you’re off to the movies. What to see: The unstoppable Sandra Bullock in another romantic comedy? Gamer? Hmmm…maybe a double feature, the unstoppable Sandra Bullock in another romantic comedy andGamer? (What the heck is Gamer? Doesn’t a sequel to The Crow usually fly into this spot?)
No, you’re not like me. But I’ve got news for you: I’m not like me, either. Drag me to hell: I’m not gonna sit on my ass in some multiplex when the best weather of the season has arrived at the 11.5th hour. I’m going to sit outside and taunt the kids who have to go back to school on Tuesday—man, I hated Labor Day Weekend when I was a kid, knowing that the school bus was going to pull up like Charon the ferryman to escort me back to Hades.
Summer. It was good, now it’s dead. And it’s time to reflect on the corpse.
Boxoffice-wise, the top five films of the season were the Transformers and Harry Potter sequels, Up, The Hangover, and Star Trek. I saw the last three. (In a simpler time in my life, say any day before Aug. 25, 2008, I would have seen them all. The franchises got the boot.) And they were good. Well, The Hangover and Star Trek were good; I can’t say I got down with Up, which struck me as minor Pixar, not out-of-gas Pixar like Cars but a little thin. Still, I’ll buy the DVD—except for Cars, I have them all, even Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo—and give it another spin. (more…)
Halloween 2 opens today, Aug. 28. Checking my calendar just to make sure I didn’t need a costume, that’s two months too early. But, according to Miramax, it’s good business: Halloween H20 and Rob Zombie’s reboot opened to big numbers in August. Relieved that I don’t have to cut holes in a sheet to dress up like a ghost, I’ll roll with that.
What, though, was Focus Features smoking when it decided to open Taking Woodstock two weeks after the 40th commemoration of the actual event? Maybe I’m wrong, yet I’d say the buzz has faded, man. Or what buzz there was—due to a combination of our fragmented media culture and my lack of much media at all while on vacation earlier this month, I pretty much missed it. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, and the main stage was crowded with other golden oldies from the summer of 1969, among them the moon landing, the Manson murders and Chappaquiddick, which has been churning up headlines again. Director Ang Lee and writer and co-producer James Schamus, the co-president of Focus, aren’t quite striking while the iron is white-hot.
Then again, the film is more Woodstock-ish than Woodstock, a pot brownie with some Capra corn mixed in. My memories are purple hazy, but I recall sitting through Woodstock the documentary once, perking up for the best bits. (Last man on Earth Charlton Heston, an unlikely viewer even under the entertainment-deprived circumstances, sat through it hundreds of times in 1971’s The Omega Man.) Taking Woodstock, a sort of making-of the event, is the same way, though the choice moments are few. Most of them come from the real-life anecdotes sprinkled in: the organizers ordering lots of brown rice to “keep the hippies from shitting in the fields,” or the mild electrification of metal surfaces after a lightning storm, which crimped the performance schedule. It’s the fact-based stuff that’s a bummer. (more…)
Just about this time last year I devoted a column to indie or indie-ish movies hunkered down out there among the multiplex behemoths, titled “Summer Shorts.” It’s time for the sequel. The “specialty” market needs all the help it can get—this year’s biggest grosser among the littles has been Sunshine Cleaning, which washed up with a paltry $12 million in the till, or about what it costs to stage a Quidditch match. Consider this a lifeline, for them and for you, if you’re sick of super-stuff (and don’t forget the excellent The Hurt Locker, which I reviewed two weeks ago).
What I liked best about Moon, which I saw this opportune week, was its retro look. Director Duncan Jones (once known as “Zowie Bowie,” son of the formerly named David Jones) was inspired by the industrial design of Silent Running, Alien, and Outland, which production designer Tony Noble and visual effects supervisor Gavin Rothery translated with models rather than computer graphics. Every time the movie, shot in slightly distressed widescreen by Gary Shaw, ventures outside to the lunar surface I was transported to the pre-digital era. This movie has those movies in mind and also the worlds of Gerry Anderson, of TV’s Thunderbirds and Space: 1999, whose 1969 feature Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is another clear inspiration. (And maybe The Man Who Fell to Earth, but Jones is careful to distance himself from his space oddity dad.) (more…)
As you might have heard, the Beatles albums have been remastered, in a format called “CD.” (“Compact disc,” right? I owned some of those back when I had hair.) Not that you would know from this site—Popdose has done a lousy job covering this.
